Month: February, 2017

The very title poses a puzzle. How what? Why what? Yet the definite articles assert certitude. The what. The how. Turns out in this brainy play about two smart women, perplexity and uncertainty unspool like two coiled strands of a double helix.

Just opened in a solid production at Theater J directed with penetrating precision by Shirley Serotsky, Sarah Treem’s The How and the Why entices us into two interconnected mysteries. Parsed apart those mysteries are interesting, but taken together they are thoroughly fascinating. The play teases us with evidence about each line of inquiry, then leaves us in the extraordinary cognitive situation of figuring out how and why the two are linked.

One of those strands is scientific. The two women are evolutionary biologists. In their professional lives, they both theorize about menstruation—how and why it evolved in the human species. Turns out menstruation is a mystery male scientists have not thought to track down. (No mystery there.) From a Darwinian, natural-selection point of view, menstruation is counter-indicated. What on earth can account for the massive caloric expenditure required for this periodic flushing of the uterus? The advantage to the species of egg production is a no brainer. But with foodstuffs scarce, how is all that blood loss not egregious waste? The question may not be the sort that keeps one up at night, but for the two women scientists in The How and the Why, it’s a bafflement whose explanation cries out to be theorized.

The older is Zelda Kahn, an unmarried woman of a certain age whose scientific brilliance and myriad career achievements have set her up in exactly the life she wanted. When we first meet her in her imposing academic office, we get a sense of her stature, and Valerie Leonard’s flawless performance gives Zelda just the right sort of professionalism, shrewd, cool, and wise-cracking.

Zelda has a theory about menstruation that has garnered her accolades in academe. In a multitude of publications she has put forth a “grandmother” hypothesis. The gist of it is that in primitive society when fertile females were kept constantly pregnant, the job of childcare fell to females who were postmenopausal. Which explains why menstruation stops but not why it begins.

In science both the how and the why are important, as the younger woman, Rachel Hardeman, tells us. A how without a verifiable why is science’s unfinished business.

Rachel is 28, has a boyfriend, and has shown up in Zelda’s office, we don’t yet know what for. Rachel is a doctoral student still looking for the life she wants. She’s on a path of both self and scientific discovery. But what she knows for sure is that she wants her life to include a husband and children along with her career in evolutionary biology. Playing Rachel, Katie deBuys has the more challenging role because Rachel’s early-career angsting could easily get grating. DeBuys, however, finds just the right likeability in her longing, and by the end lifts Rachel to equal standing with Zelda.

Rachel has a theory that menstruation evolved to purge the uterus of all the toxicity that travels with spermatozoa. She’s arguably correct about the toxicity of sperm. (Another topic male scientists probably don’t delight in.) But there are some holes in her theory. Like what about postmenopausal intercourse, which probably happened then as now? Or does Rachel’s theory mean all female life necessarily expired before the flow of menses ceased? Is a puzzlement.

Just as Treem snares our curiosity about the scientific standoff between Zelda’s and Rachel’s views, she casts a prior line of interrogation: Who are these two women to each other? For the longest time, we have no clue.

Turns out they are biological mother and daughter. The backstory Treem tells to arrange for this mother-daughter meeting and explain why it hasn’t happened before is persuasive if a little pat. Zelda gave Rachel up for adoption; Rachel just found out from the agency who her birth mother is; voilà this visit. What makes their slowly revealed connection so provocative is not why it happened but what it means: Rachel not only has traits associated with Zelda’s X chromosome; Rachel has Zelda’s so-called Eve gene (the mitrochondrial DNA inherited only through the female line). And they are now having a mind-blowing exchange about evolutionary biology within a like-mother/like-daughter drama the likes of which I’ve never seen.

Which is why it was no coincidence I walked out thinking of the double helix. The coolly scientific mystery in the play coils around the emotional relational mystery. Round and round they go, each enhancing the other’s hold on our imagination.

This all comes with a gloss of feminism lite. Zelda’s decision while a grad student to give up her child and pursue her career. Rachel’s desire to affirm her relationship with her boyfriend as a coauthor and collaborator in her work. Zelda and Rachel go round and round the “Can women have it all?” question (about which other plays I’ve seen have had more probative things to say). But this was not the discourse that really made me wrap my mind around this play.

What leaps to mind as I think back on the pleasure of watching Theater J’s The How and the Why is its brilliant portrayal of two incandescently intelligent women. At root they are trying to understand something about what bonds them to all mothers and daughters before them—and why that lineage matters.

A long-ago love story inspired this richly textured play with 1920s music. When Playwright Steven A. Butler Jr. was growing up, he heard family stories about how his great-great grandparents, Ruby Dyson and Ollie Tyson, fell in love in 1927. They met and settled in the small town of La Plata, Maryland, and began a family that now extends for generations.

Ollie and Ruby’s gifted great-great grandson has now imagined the world their love began in as a traveling circus. It’s an inspired idea. The owner of this circus is a white man. The townspeople the circus plays for are white. And all the circus performers and roustabouts are “Colored” (the word used throughout the script in its period sense). The result is not only a hugely satisfying saga bursting with heart, humor, and song. It is also a profound narrative metaphor for the black family’s struggle to survive under conditions of prejudice and exploitation not far removed from slavery.

The set is the interior of a worn and tattered tent. Swaths of burlap drape up to a pinnacle where there’d be a tent pole and descend to surround the playing area, which is strewn with straw. At one end is a high stage all set for live performance. Platforms suggesting straw bales make a secondary stage. Clusters of old-time wood tables and wicker chairs evoke transient living quarters, and an old Victrola lends the place a touch of home away from home. It all promises “backstage drama!” and “showtime!” and the show, engagingly shaped by Director Courtney Baker-Oliver, delivers both in equal measure.

Wonderful music arises during the dramatic action—ballads, torch songs, novelty show tunes, and more. (The delightful original songs are by Baker-Oliver, Butler, and Christopher John Burnett; the deft musical direction is by Burnett and Willie Ferguson.) In Act One, while we are being introduced to each of the thirteen characters, there’s more talk than singing; in Act Two, after we’ve met them, we are treated to more musical performances. The structure of the show draws us closer not only to the characters’ stories but to the meanings in the music.

And what moving stories they are. There are upwards of a dozen and they interweave and intersect throughout in ways that are by turns surprising, touching, shocking, and stirring, like a sprawling mini-epic.

Restoration Stage, which has produced this and other works by Butler (including his acclaimed Chocolate Covered Ants last season), has as its tagline “Restoring the black family—one story at a time,” which perfectly describes Butler’s present accomplishment. The first African American man to be named to the Arena Stage Playwrights’ program, Butler has just given American theater a masterpiece of empathy, entertainment, and uplift.

As the play began, it took me a few moments to catch on to Butler’s genius in crafting and combining all his character-driven narratives. They just seemed to come fast on the heels of one another, each a fragment unto itself. But then I realized what a powerful tapestry of troubles and longings Butler was weaving, what a sensitively embellished depiction of a community connected in struggle, what an act of love it had been for him to tell of the origin of his forebears’ devotion within a larger family context. And by the end I was in awe.

Because so much of the pleasure in watching this work is discovering its manifold subplots, I’d be remiss if I gave them away. But I can preview a few of the couples stories, because as is typical in classic comedies, there’s a pleasing payoff at the end of joyful pairings off.

Butler casts his great-great-grandfather Ollie as ringmaster of the circus, which he once owned but sold to a white man, Benjamin Boswell. In Pat Martin’s performance Boswell now lords it over the troupe like P.T. Barnum channeling Simon Legree as a pimp. Miles Folley brings to the role of Ollie such a physical agility and adorably earnest charm that it’s no wonder he catches the eye of Butler’s great-great grandmother Ruby, and no wonder this vivacious chanteuse catches his. The character of Ruby emerged for me as the play’s most knockout role, and Ayanna Hardy’s performance in it is heartbreaking. By the time she belts the first solo in the show, “Darkies Never Dream,” she holds the audience in her arms.

Juxtaposed with the young lovers, Butler introduces an older married couple, nicknamed Pumpkin and Pickles, who have been on the road like seasoned vaudevillians. They do a musical-comedy routine in the second act with the cringeworthy title “Oh, You Coon,” and Corisa Myers as Pumpkin and Charles W. Harris Jr. as Pickles bring down the house. They also have an indelibly moving scene together during which they tell why they fell in love with each other, and who they are to each other.

There’s a late-arriving romance near the end involving two of the white characters, Boswell’s son Colby and Leonora, who comes from a well-to-do family in town. Colby’s complex connection to the other story lines is fascinating, and Robert Hamilton does a good job conveying it. Despite being upbraided by his abusive dad, he has no inclination to take it out on others, i.e. the showpeople whom he manages; instead he identifies with them as family. When we first meet Leonore she seems the embodiment of clueless white snobbery, and Suzanne Edgar plays it to the hilt. She delivers a terrific ballad in Act One, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” and in a twist goes useful-liberal at the end.

Besides the Ensemble’s opener, “Circus Theme,” there are three other musical numbers in the first act, each owned magnificently by one of the foregoing female singer-actors. The third is Pumpkin’s funny-sad “I’m a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird.” And it’s Pumpkin who brings us back after intermission with a rousing rendition of “Good Trouble” full of risque insinuation.

The innuendos roll on with “I Ain’t Gonna Give You My Jellyroll,” sung sweetly by Abiola Yetunde as Birdie, a shy roustabout who has taken a liking to an older roustabout named William (a fine Mandrill Solomon).

Even in a play full of fascinating characters, the originality of Freda stands out. She sings a song called “Mr. America” wearing faux Native American garb. Actually she’s Mexican and longs to return to California but keeps up this phoney gig like a trouper believing it’ll help her get there one day. Sara Hernandez’s performance in this role is among the most poignant in the play.

Everyone in the circus ran away to join it at some point, and some of their backstories are wrenching. Ruby’s and Ollie’s certainly are. There’s a scene between them about their pasts that completely choked me up. So did Zola’s. Madam Zola, as she styles herself, is an exotic, a fortune teller, one of those characters so out of left field they might belong in another play—until their heart-stopping story is disclosed. Zola has another of the female solos, “You Can’t Tell the Difference After Dark” (more innuendo), and Brittany Timmons sells it for all she’s worth.

There’s a tragically sad story line about a character nicknamed Tumbler (well played by Obinna Nawachuk), a simpleton who performs as a primate, dressed like a cartoon monkey. He longs to see his grandmother again, and just as Freda endures the humiliation of acting like an Indian, he naively believes this sideshow job will reunite them.

There’s also a fourth white character, Daphne, who is Lenora’s high-society friend and like her a snob. Unlike Lenora, however, Daphne is visibly uncomfortable around the Colored characters, and Jenna Murphy’s performance keeps that aversion very credible.

There are few moments in Butler’s play that are not in some sense about race. One of the qualities of his writing that caught my attention early on is the fact that the four white characters in it are always white; they never become unraced or raceless as they would in a play—written by a white author, say—where nine characters are white and four are black. In such a case the black characters typically stay portrayed and perceived as black while the white characters are portrayed and perceived as “race-neutral generic human.” That never happens in The Very Last Days of the First Colored Circus—to the deep credit of the entire production.

Unusually, the costumes and properties are designed by the director and the playwright. Ollie’s ringmaster outfit is appealingly clownish and the women’s show-biz gowns are stunning. Lighting Designer Jerry M. Dale Jr. has turned the black box at Anacostia Playhouse into a most enjoyable tent show. The lovely choreography is by Raquis Petree. And Sound Designers Eric Wells and Aaron Gerald, besides subtly mic’ing the playing area, provide a few thunderous weather effects, playback of old records, and a vintage stand mic for the acts on stage.

Over and above the outstanding music, performances, and production values in Stephen A. Butler Jr.’s The Very Last Days of the First Colored Circus, there is its eloquent testimony to the resilience without which the black family in America could not have survived the African diaspora. To watch that dramatized in the fictional context of a traveling circus is to see the obstacles in an imaginative new way but also to appreciate again the persistence and virtuosity that, within the remembered bonds of African kinship, overcame, went forth, and multiplied.

R.I.P., Ruby Dyson and Ollie Tyson. A great-great grandson of yours just did you proud.

Running Time: Three hours 15 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission.

Far off the radar of most grownup theatergoers, the writer/director Psalmayene 24 has been creating an extraordinary body of work for children. I’ve been an admirer of the trenchant work he has directed for mature audiences—the plays Not Enuf Lifetimes and The Shipment knocked me out. But until The Freshest Snow Whyte—his fourth creation for Imagination Stage—I had not tuned in to the delightful and insightful shows Psalmayene 24 makes up for kids.

Better make that: kids of all ages.

And before saying what a shimmering fine show this is, better say up front: The Freshest Snow Whyte delivers a message about equality so beautiful and important, it’s not only family-friendly; it’s what the whole world needs now.

The Freshest Snow Whyte is a hip hop musical. Hip hop lite, you might say, upbeat like pop with zero menace. The word freshest in the title and script means coolest, the best. In the spirit of that superlative, the tightest book and slickest lyrics are by Psalmayene 24 and the dopest hip hop score is composed and performed by Musical Director Nick “tha 1da” Hernandez.

Psalmayene 24 imagines the fairy tale character Snow White in a futuristic comic strip world. Scenic Designer Richard Ouellette goes crazy askew; eccentric triangles outlined in neon form the upstage wall and an overhead projection screen, and more irregular triangles make up the floor. It’s like Buckminster Fuller was on something. Strangely the disorientation becomes the perfect locale for Psalmayene 24’s charming tale.

The plot borrows just a smidgen from the Brothers Grimm. It’s the year 3000 and Snow Whyte has become a universe-renowned graffiti artist, the freshest, in fact. That’s the verdict of Mira, who adjudicates the competition—from behind a scrim as if inside a mirror—and declares who’s the freshest of them all. We get to see Snow Whyte’s award-winning work on the big screen above the stage (Projections Designer Tewodross “Teo” Melchishua Williams makes the art on her behalf), and it is indeed marvelous to behold. Kind of like Kandinsky was on something.

Snow Whyte has no wicked stepmother, no wicked stepsisters, but she does have a wickedly entertaining uncle, Kanye East. Kanye’s got a huge heart. He took Snow Whyte in when she was little and raised her to be the self-possessed young woman she has become. But he also has a huge ego. He is himself a graffiti artist, and he flies into a fit of pique when his niece gets Mira’s nod as freshest.

Kanye has a robot named 3Pac, who regularly needs a reboot. Kanye enlists the malfunctioning 3Pac as his accomplice in a scheme to settle the score with Snow Whyte and prove he has more talent. Thus is set in motion an interplanetary chase-and-intrigue caper invested in win-or-lose competitiveness and involving some very silly walks.

Upon learning that her uncle is up to no good, Snow Whyte goes into exile on the planet Palladium, where she though an alien is given sanctuary (imagine that!). Her host family consists of two twin zanies, Pop Lock and K Rock—the seven dwarfs, downsized—whose floppy walks make them seem rubberized. When they go off to work, they let her stay in their home but make her promise not to let anyone in the door. Meanwhile Kanye has tracked her down (he and 3Pac travel by nifty hover-limo), and he tries comical disguises to inveigle himself inside.

The night I saw the show, the kids in the audience were loving it. The live-wire actors busted the rhymes and bounced to the beats like all get out. And they could have not had better confederates than Choreographer Tony Thomas II and Costume Designer Jeanette Christensen. The musical accompaniment is prerecorded (Sound Designer Thomas Sowers keeps it real), but the rapping and singing could not be more alive. Together they contrived a crew of comic strip characters who were nonstop outlandish and enchanting.

The artistry of Lighting Designer Dylan Uremovich impressed the young audience so much that one particular effect stopped the show in audible awe. It was when Snow Whyte said of the weather “It’s sparkling.” And the darkened auditorium lit up with glittering starbursts.

The piece is perfectly paced for young attention spans, with ample interludes of audience participation. The cast would start up a call and response to make a plot point happen, for instance, and the kids would chime in with glee. And there was a bit when the zanies are away and Snow Whyte discovers something she can’t identify. It’s a broom, the kids yelled out. When Snow Whyte asked for someone to show her how to use it, one tot did so adorably.

The story wraps up in a pointed metaphor, which I disclose to underscore what an impressively principled script Psalmayene 24 has written. The twin zanies’ employment, it turns out, is in a cosmic mixing and measuring operation. It’s the place from which each individual who is born gets assigned a unique and individualized array of talent. Some individuals may excel at one thing; some may excel at another, and so on. But each individual gets the same total amount. Everyone’s assortment is different but no one’s aggregate is better. Everyone is equal.

Speaking of arrays of talent, the actors deserve a special shout-out. Because I had seen several of them before in serious and substantive dramatic roles, I was blown away to see what they can do when they cut loose and go wacky. Frank Britton as 3Pac, Katy Carkuff as Snow Whyte, Louis E. Davis as Pop Lock, Jonathan Feuer as Mira, Calvin McCullough as Kanye East, Taylor Robinson as K Rock—their polished physicality and mischievous free spirits kept me giggling to myself at stuff the kids could not possibly appreciate, because they could not know what awesome acting talent was taking us along on this buskers’ holiday of hilarity.

So bring the kids, without question (The Freshest Snow Whyte is a kick for five and up). But even with no young ones along, The Freshest Snow Whyte is an inspired mix of terrific fun and stirring truth.

Whatever this play meant to Broadway audiences when it debuted in 1941, just prior to America’s entry into a war of resistance to fascism abroad, what matters now is what it means to audiences just as America has entered a war of resistance to fascism here at home. Does Lillian Hellman’s principled script—now in a praiseworthy production on the waterfront at Arena Stage—stand the test of time? Does it warrant viewing, in other words, as a Watch on the Potomac?

Judging from audience response on opening night, the answer is yes.

The earliest and clearest evidence that Watch on the Rhine was landing with contemporary relevance came in an exchange between the young lawyer David Farrelly (Thomas Keegan) and the antifascist activist Kurt Müller (Andrew Long).

David’s mother Fanny Farrelly (Marsha Mason) is the wealthy widow whose sumptuous country estate near DC the play takes place in. It is 1940, and Kurt has arrived with his wife Sara Müller (Lise Bruneau), who is David’s beloved sister, and their three children. The Müller family have been on the run, because Kurt in his native Germany is an enemy of the state. And they have all been welcomed without reservation into the Farrelly home.

This is the line of David’s to Kurt that prompted a sudden and resounding round of applause:

You are a political refugee. We don’t turn back people like you, people in danger.

And boom. The exigency of sanctuary hit home in the house.

As the story unfolds, Hellman reveals Kurt’s antifascist conscience as if a beacon of bravery. “Here I stand, I can do no other,” Kurt quotes Martin Luther, the famous German resister to institutional religious tyranny. Kurt faces threats on his life, not only from Nazis but from a scoundrel houseguest, Teck De Brancovis (J Anthony Crane)—a plot that thickens harrowingly as the play proceeds. Kurt’s mother-in-law Fanny offers Kurt not only a wing of the house to stay in but some serious cash. She may be a checkbook liberal, but she appreciates what’s priceless about radical resistance. And through it all, Hellman paints a profoundly moving portrait of Kurt’s loving family standing by him—Sarah, of course, but also the three precocious kids.

I had an opportunity during rehearsals to interview the actors who portray those youngsters. I wanted to look at Watch on the Rhine through their eyes. The play is a combination light drawing room comedy and disturbing dark drama—like a specialty sandwich held together with mayonnaise that says a mouthful. So I was curious how they were wrapping their heads around it.

Two of the questions I asked were:

Watch on the Rhine takes place in 1940, shortly before the United States entered World War II. Your mother is American and your father is German. What do think it means to your character that your father is against fascism and the Nazis?

And:

How can someone your age relate to the themes that are in Watch on the Rhine?

Their answers say as much about the present resonance of the play as did that round of grownup applause on opening night.

Sixteen-year-old Ethan Miller, who plays the oldest of the three siblings, said,

Joshua lived in Germany during the fascist regime and knows how dangerous fascism can be, and he has a great sense of patriotism for his father’s mission. Also he has a small sense of democracy, because his mother is American, which gives him more of a reason to stand behind his father’s work. There is also a great sense of fear involved, because it seems no matter where they go, fascism always seems to follow.

In the time period when this show takes place, very few people had the right to speak up about important world matters such as human rights. Among the excluded were children. They did not have a voice, and even if they did want to speak up, they were not allowed to. It is important for teens to see this show and appreciate how fortunate we are. Unlike in the show, teens today are able to be heard and to be seen, and can make a difference by speaking up instead of being silenced.

Babette grew up in Germany as fascism was on the rise. Due to the nature of her father’s job, she and her brothers have gotten used to a lifestyle where they’re constantly in fear that their family will be caught by the Nazis, even when they move to America.

Watch on the Rhine is timeless in that it combines the stories of a family reunion, a relationship, and a political feud. Despite being written in 1941, the themes are still relevant today because it focuses on a modern family that has complexities in all fields.

And eleven-year-old Tyler Bowman, a delightful scene stealer as the youngest, said,

Bodo feels that his father is doing the right thing even though it goes against his native country, and Bodo is proud of his father.

There are times when kids just do normal, everyday things like baseball, knitting, fixing things, etc., even though the world is changing.

As crisply directed by Jackie Maxwell as Watch on the Rhine is, there are some plot complications in the script that don’t have a self-evident modern-day analog; as a result they can seem inscrutable. I overheard a couple minor comments to that effect, and I myself got perplexed at times. For instance, I didn’t exactly track Teck’s treachery (though Crane does villainy vividly) or the backstory of the twist that necessitates Kurt’s return to Germany (though the emotion when he says good-bye to his family was off the charts). But as the teens and tween quoted above can confirm, you can be underage and get what’s timeless here.

What comes through compellingly in Watch on the Rhine is its overarching narrative of resistance, persistence, and courage—and the need for solidarity as if we’re family. Suddenly the year 1940 and the year 2017 seem the same moment in perilous times. And Arena Stage has given us a show whose urgency is so relatable it aches.

Friendships between fat girls and gay boys really are a thing, practically a cliche actually—or a trope, as Playwright Morgan Gould dignifies them when referring to just such a queer pairing in her audacious new play, I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart. You can find commentary and confessions about the familiar phenom online—conjectures, for instance, that fat-girl/gay-boy friendships have appeal because they are not sexually threatening to either party, or because gay boys have taste in fashion that fat girls fancy though it doesn’t fit, or because fat girls offer maternal succor that gay boys long for even as they chase dick. There are googobs of cliches to explain the cliche, in other words.

Gould’s I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart, just opened at Studio X (the adventurous R&D lab at Studio Theatre), features fat girl Sam and gay boy Leo. They met in college and for the last fifteen years have been roommates and best buds. She has a boyfriend who sometimes stays over in her bedroom (and who, we learn gratuitously from Leo, has a crooked cock). We learn nothing of Leo’s sex life except whatever it is happens outside their apartment (because at home, as Sam lets him know she knows, he just jacks off). They’re both would-be writers (though she’s more disciplined and productive than he). And they can each lob witty barbs like duelists at a dart board.

Gould, who herself identifies as fat, seems to want us to like them but not a whole lot. As adeptly performed by Nicole Spiezio and Tommy Heleringer, Sam and Leo run the gamut from fun and games to some truly troubling stuff. Heleringer is adroit at throwing the sort of gay male shade at Sam that could well be called swish-ous. The role seems written for him; it fits like a rubber and he keeps it up with gusto. His antic moves and jokey mugging hijack many a scene. And there’s a shocking surprise twist at the end when we realize how skillfully Spiezio has all along been revealing long-suffering Sam’s mean streak.

The production begins razzmatazz, like a campy floor show in front of a silver mylar rain curtain. Sam and Leo lip-sync the song that is the title of the play. Then the curtain opens on Sam and Leo’s apartment (uncannily realistic in Luciana Stecconi’s set design). As the two begin their badinage, you’d bet this is the comedy love child of Will and Grace and Friends. But Gould (who also directs) has something darker in store.

Gould frames Sam and Leo’s friendship not as an instance of any cliched conjecture but as two people’s authentic response to a not-fake fact: the social stigma on being fat and the social stigma on being gay. In Gould’s clear-eyed view, what bonds Sam and Leo is the mutual support their friendship represents, and she is eloquent on the subject. As she told the gay weekly The Washington Blade:

We know what hate looks like. When I walk in a room, I know immediately which person hates fat people. They don’t have to say a word. You learn that early. And gay men learn who hates them really early too. We find each other like a safe haven, a place where we can be mean and funny together. It’s us against the world.

The hate Sam and Leo face in the world is palpable in the play, like a presumption of intolerance, though the script smartly doesn’t harp on it. What the script does expose glaringly, however, is how that hate internalized and unexamined suffuses their friendship.

They frequently check each other on it. At one point Sam tells Leo (in what is played as a throwaway line), “You’re the world’s worst misogynist.” Moments later she asks him sincerely if something she just said was “homophobic-y.” And Leo teasing Sam for not being very feminist and assertive says, “You’re no Gloria Steinem.” They’re educated and politically aware of the systematic oppression they each face in the world.

Yet there are layers in their lives together of underlying internalized oppression that never surface between them as problematic and ought to. For instance Sam routinely cleans Leo’s room and neither ever queries whether this might be sexist male privilege. Meanwhile Leo routinely and brusquely dry-humps Sam, and once to get her attention grabs her breast, all of which Sam puts up with without protest. Neither ever interrogates whether this might smack of female deference to gay male woman mocking.

So I found a lot to tear apart in I Fucking Wanna Tear You Apart. More than once what was clearly meant as humor made me wince. In particular the character of Leo, while by no means the world’s worst misogynist (that title now belongs to POTUS), poses a dramaturgical threat to Gould’s undertaking. As written and as performed, Leo embodies stereotypical gay male indifference to women’s body integrity like a spot-on cartoon. Leo knows better than to fat-shame Sam, but he clearly takes out his internalized femiphobia on her, because he’s a man and he can. As a consequence Sam’s desperate I’m-nothing-without-you devotion to him becomes pathetic. Not exactly the self-respect you’d expect in a heroine fat grrrl.

I believed and admired Gould’s framing of Sam and Leo’s outlier friendship as an essential mutual support system in a hostile environment. She got that deep and true and right. But I did not trust that she was accurately tracking how that environment had contaminated them.

Not until, that is, Gould introduced a third character.

Chloe is a coworker of Leo’s whom he befriends and brings home to meet Sam. He fully expects Sam to like Chloe and welcome her. As the three sit side-by-side on the sofa, Leo in the middle gleefully exclaims, “My work wife and my home wife!” Anna O’Donoghue brings to the role of Chloe such a pert simplicity and ebullience that we along with Leo fall in like with her immediately. But Sam does not. Chloe is thin, and Sam feels threatened by Leo’s friendship with her. Sam believes it to be a betrayal: fraternizing with the enemy hegemony. And Sam sets out to tear them apart.

As plotting this is brilliant and as played it gets riveting. Gould lets us see Sam’s female self-loathing lash out at an utter innocent, a women whom Sam can revile with all the scorn that has been dumped on her. It is chilling how daringly Gould now takes Sam to the dark side of outside oppression when it dwells within.

Gould doesn’t take the same insightful scalpel to Leo, however. And that may well be because the play’s origins were autobiographical. Sam in a sense is Gould’s alter ego. Dear friendships with two gay men inspired her to put the fat-girl/gay-boy trope on stage. That Gould eviscerates Sam but lets Leo off the hook may well be a gesture of friendly discretion. But theater, I think, insists on more ruthless truth-telling.

Codependency is a trope with mind-blowing dramatic potential, as Ford’s revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?reminds us. George and Martha cannot live without each other, nor can they with. Albee saw into their poisoned souls and knew exactly what made them sick. Heaping their self-hatred on stage in all honesty, Albee makes us laugh in gut bursts and tremble in sorrow and pity.

I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart shows every bit as much promise as Edward Albee’s early work, arguably more. That Morgan Gould can be mentioned in the penumbra of this playwriting giant is a tribute to her voice, craft, and conscience. Gould has braved stigma both outside and inside the theater world to tell the tragicomic story of Sam and Leo’s codependency. Gould truthfully references the real world as she makes a world of respite real on stage, and that counts. That matters. Studio is to be applauded for taking a chance on this play and giving it a first-rate production. That I Wanna Fucking Tear You Apart is incomplete and still unfinished only makes it all the more a fascinating and important theatrical find.

A man has a remote rustic fishing cabin. There are lot of fish in the water nearby. He’s a rugged, outdoorsy guy and he loves to fish. In a Hemingway novel he would not be a fish out of water. This man has been coming to this cabin since he was seven and his uncle brought him here and taught him how to fish. His uncle also brought women here. A lot of women. The man cannot remember how many. The man does not want to be like that. He has made a vow to himself. He wants to fall in love with one woman. One woman only. A woman whom he can bring to this idyllic mancave of a fishing cabin and with whom he can share the simple joy of trout fishing. That’s what he truly wants. That’s what he believes about himself. That’s who he tells himself he is. Not like his philandering uncle.

If that sounds fishy, like bait before a switch, it is. For The River by Jez Butterworth, now making a splash at Spooky Action Theater, is intriguingly not what it seems. To the Man (a terrific Jeffrey Allin), it is the story of a trout-fishing tryst with his new girlfriend, the singular woman he loves. But Butterworth lets us the audience in on a very different story, a tantalizing tale of the heart that’s as for real as only the surreal can be.

We meet The Man’s new girlfriend, The Woman (the extraordinary Emma Jackson; she’s absolutely transfixing). They’re going to go fishing. In the next scene we meet someone else who is also The Man’s new girlfriend, The Other Woman (a splendid Karen Novack). They have just been fishing. In alternating scenes these two women continue to play a continuous role in the same narrative, which is both perplexing and very cool.

So how many other fish are there in the sea? each woman asks him, in effect. None others, The Man avers. Yet we see with our own eyes that this Man exists in his own narrative as if with one woman; meanwhile two actual women exist in his narrative separately. To themselves, The Woman and The Other Woman are individuated, each drawn to The Man, each deserving of fidelity. They do find out they are not unique in his narrative; he apparently intends for them to know. But are they actually interchangeable to him? Like all trout are alike in the lake?

Director Rebecca Holderness with Assistant Director Jennifer Knight have taken what could easily be staged as a poetic paean to male-pattern myopia and turned it into an utterly fascinating portrayal of perspicacious female points of view. Jackson and Novack establish their characters vividly, subtly revealing they each know better than to fall for this man hook, line, and sinker. The Man is oblivious to their uniqueness, he doesn’t seem to see it at all; meanwhile we in the audience are riveted by it. Which is not to take away from Allin’s nuanced performance as The Man. He comes off sincere not sinister, gracious not guileful. He’s even a man who knows his way around a kitchen. There’s an amazing scene where he cleans and cooks a real fish (fresh caught by The Other Woman) and then serves it sizzling from the stove (to the delicious delight of The Woman). Whatta guy.

In its brief 90 minutes The River becomes a seductive deep dive into the drama of male-female hooking up. Self-delusion and disillusion. Best intentions and betrayal. Imbalance of power. All the everyday heartbreakers flayed and filleted before our eyes. Except The River lures us with lush language. It tickles us with comic riffs. It teases us with theatrical trickery. It stuns us with poignance. And it catches us with a mystery that won’t stop reeling in meaning.